


There’s a long long trail a-winding

by middlemarch



Category: Betsy-Tacy Series - Maud Hart Lovelace
Genre: Angst, Drabbles, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Marriage, Post-Canon, Post-War, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 17:23:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12611604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: A man came home with blue eyes and golden hair turning to silver. He was her husband and she did not know him.





	There’s a long long trail a-winding

When Joe came home, his cane was no longer even the slightest affectation. He leaned on it heavily from the moment he rose awkwardly from their bed and every week there were nights when Betsy found a reason they could not go to visit the Kerrs or her parents, that it was necessary to stay in and for Joe to find himself on the sofa with a cushion tucked beneath the small of his back. The surgeons at the front had managed to save the leg but just barely and Betsy couldn’t help wondering whether the salvage was worth it. 

So many had not come home at all. The Great White Way would never light up with Tony Markham’s name again. Those black eyes would never flash while he sang the latest song the way the composer had hardly dreamt possible. Julia was a widow and Paige’s flute sat locked in its case as if in a nun’s reliquary. Betsy had a letter on black bordered paper that told her how Claude Heaton had been lost. And a package had arrived from Venice, a dried yellow rose between the pages of book inscribed by Marco Regali _Per la Betta mia_.

Joe didn’t write anything that wasn’t an article for the Tribune for over a year. She’d find him sitting at his desk in the alcove of their room, staring, the pen not even in his hand. She learned quickly not to ask what he saw, what he remembered. He wept in his sleep but he never uttered a word when he woke, choking on the tears. Betsy worked on the novel she’d started the day he enlisted but she didn’t let him see the first draft, set in the Munich she remembered. She knew to wait for him. She waited.

She hadn’t named their daughter Bettina. Or Ruth or Julia or Josephine. She had been alone and she hadn’t had a letter from him in weeks when the baby came. She knew enough that the baby’s blue eyes might turn hazel. Miranda met her father when she was six months old and had two teeth, too sharp to remind Betsy of pearls. Joe had stroked her round cheek with a trembling finger and murmured, “O brave new world/ That has such people in it” and Betsy had not wiped the tears from her face at the sound, at Miranda’s laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> A small series of four drabbles to cover the post-war, post Betsy's Wedding era. And also to account for "whenever I get Bettina." The title is from a song at the end of Betsy's Wedding, actually at Tib's wedding.
> 
> Joe quotes The Tempest.


End file.
